End culture of rape in 2013

By Lauren Wolfe, Special to CNN

Updated 6:40 PM ET, Thu January 3, 2013

Photos: India rape protest29 photos

India rape protests – An Indian activist gets his head shaven in protest against the Dehli gang-rape in New Delhi on Friday, January 4. A gang of men is accused of repeatedly raping a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi. Police formally charged the five suspects with rape, kidnapping and murder after the woman died.

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India rape protests – Indian lawyers shout during a protest at the entrance to Saket District Court in New Delhi on Thursday, January 3.

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India rape protests – About 600 guitarists play John Lennon's "Imagine" in a tribute to the rape victim in Darjeeling on January 3.

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India rape protests – Indian women take part in the Women's Dignity March in New Delhi on Wednesday, January 2. Several hundred people participated in the solidarity march organized by the government, which ended at Rajghat, the memorial for Mohandas Gandhi.

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India rape protests – Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, center, participates in a group prayer during the Women's Dignity March on January 2.

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India rape protests – Indian demonstrators perform a prayer ritual in memory of a gang-rape victim in New Delhi on Monday, December 31. The family of the victim said they would not rest until her killers are hanged as they spoke of their own pain and trauma over a crime that has united the country in grief.

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India rape protests – A Sri Lankan opposition United National Party activist places her signature on a banner in memory of the Indian gang-rape victim in Colombo on December 31.

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India rape protests – Indian protesters hold candles during a rally in New Delhi on Sunday, December 30, following the cremation of the gang-rape victim.

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India rape protests – Indian protesters walk with police officials during a rally in New Delhi on Sunday, December 30, following the cremation of a gang-rape victim in the Indian capital. The 23-year-old student died Saturday and was cremated at a private ceremony, hours after her body was flown home from Singapore. She had been gang-raped and severely beaten on December 16, triggering an outpouring of grief and anger across India.

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India rape protests – Indian protesters sit by lit candles and hold placards in New Delhi on December 30 during a protest against the gang rape.

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India rape protests – Indian residents pray during a gathering in New Delhi on December 30.

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India rape protests – Protesters hold candles during a vigil in New Delhi on Saturday, December 29, after the death of a gang-rape victim. Authorities erected security barriers throughout New Delhi's key government district after two days of street battles following a woman's gang rape on a bus on December 16. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has appealed for calm and pledged safety for women and children.

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India rape protests – Indian residents hold lighted candles during a rally in Amritsar on December 29.

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India rape protests – Students in New Delhi on Thursday, December 27, protest a recent brutal gang rape in the city.

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India rape protests – Demonstrators shout slogans and wave placards as they move toward India Gate in New Delhi on December 27.

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India rape protests – Riot police keep watch along a sealed-off road near the India Gate monument on Monday, December 24, in New Delhi after weekend clashes between protesters and police.

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India rape protests – Police fire tear gas on Sunday, December 23, during a protest calling for better safety for women following last week's rape. Thousands of protesters defied a ban on demonstrations in New Delhi on Sunday, venting their anger about the incident.

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India rape protests – Police attempt to disperse protesters on December 23. For a second day, demonstrators were blasted with water cannons in the Indian capital. While some dispersed, others huddled tightly in a circle to brave high-pressure streams in the cold weather.

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India rape protests – Demonstrators turn a car over on December 23.

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India rape protests – Students chant anti-police slogans during a protest against the Indian government's reaction to recent rape incidents in India, on Saturday, December 22, in New Delhi, India. The demonstration was prompted by wide public outrage over what police said was the gang-rape and beating of a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in the capital last Sunday.

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India rape protests – Demonstrators react from tear gas fired by police on December 22. New Delhi alone reported 572 rapes last year and more than 600 in 2012.

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India rape protests – Police arrest a demonstrator during a protest on December 22. Sunday's attack sparked furious protests across India, where official data show that rape cases have jumped almost 875% over the past 40 years -- from 2,487 in 1971 to 24,206 in 2011.

Story highlights

Lauren Wolfe: Brutal rape that killed an Indian women has caused a global outcry

In Somalia, women are planning protest next month against gender violence

She says acceptance of rape culture in domestic life and war is rampant

Wolfe: In 2013, make all sexualized violence unacceptable

On December 16, a young medical student in one of India's major cities was gang-raped, her body destroyed by the bodies of the men who allegedly assaulted her and also by the rusting metal bar doctors say they used to penetrate her. The bar removed part of her intestines. The rest were removed in a hospital far from home where she struggled for her life for just a few days.

It has taken an attack that lies nearly outside of comprehension to prompt demonstrations, but the outcry has begun.

Over the weekend, women rose up in Nepal, protesting outside the prime minister's house against gender-based violence.

This groundswell -- what Ensler calls "a catalytic moment" -- is the perfect chance for us to consider how we think about subjugation, rape, and degradation of women globally.

Gloria Steinem and I have written about how a cult of masculinity is behind the constant violation of women around the world -- that some men brutalize women against their own self-interest because of an addiction to control or domination. To put it plainly: Rape is not about sex.

"Rape is about violence," Steinem says, "proving 'masculine' superiority; often inserting guns and other objects into women's bodies; playing out hostility to other men by invading the bodies of 'their' females, including old women and babies; occupying wombs with sperm of a conquering group; owning female bodies as the means of reproduction; and raping men and boys to make them as inferior as females."

This is born out everywhere that rape occurs but especially in war zones like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Dr. Denis Mukwege, the medical director of Panzi Hospital, told me men use objects as a means to mark a woman -- to indicate that she now carries the message of violence impressed on her body. She becomes an emblem of terror meant to warn the world that nobody is safe. And while rape in war zones carries its own particular kind of horror, there is no escaping the cult of masculinity geographically. The culture of rape imbues whatever space we inhabit.

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That women are expected to put up and shut up is universally understood: A 2012 UNICEF report found that 57 percent of Indian boys and 53 percent of girls between ages of 15 and 19 think wife-beating is justified. A recent study by two nonprofits found that 65 percent of men surveyed in the Democratic Republic of Congo believe "women should accept partner violence to keep the family together."

And, as in India, where the appalling remarks of Andhra Pradesh Congress chief Botsa Satyanarayana appeared to place blame on the Delhi gang-rape victim -- she chose a strange private bus, she shouldn't have been out after dark -- politicians, clergymen, husbands, and others around the world perpetually blame rape survivors. (See this beauty from an Italian priest. Or reacquaint yourself with the stunners from Rep. Todd Akin or Senate candidate Richard Mourdock.)

These are more than just manipulative words; victim-blaming has consequences. Women are literally dying from fault-finding from Syria to Sudan in honor killings, suicides, and murders because they are blamed for their sexual assaults.

We have to move the focus off the victim. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that the "safety and security of women is of the highest concern to our government."

OK. That's one part of the equation. But what about the larger part -- what about prosecuting men who are committing these crimes? Yes, women often do not report sexualized violence. But they do not report because they know that, at least in this country, only three of every 100 men accused of rape will ever spend a day in jail.

It's time to focus on the perpetrators. And it's also time for men and women to engage in a consistent dialogue on stopping rape.

Let's hold perpetrators legally accountable and once and for all change laws and justice systems that continue to fail women.

Let's understand that rape is not a problem that affects only women: It affects families, communities, entire cultures. It is not an inevitability, but the outcome of a system based in discrimination, just as slavery was.

Let's declare 2013 The Year to End Rape. If this is a problem that men have created, this is a problem that men can help solve.